Recipe Review // Pizza Dough Tostadas

“Serve immediately. Don’t bother with a knife and fork. Bite right into that beautiful, crispy base. Enjoy immensely.”

Day Three of our Plated Trial Journey and I’m starting to get the hang of this. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like and I’m starting to trust myself a little more – and Plated a little less…

This recipe had us doing something that I have been very eager to try: dough. I have recently becoming obsessed with the Great British Bake-Off and – likewise – the idea of baking. I haven’t baked at all in my life, but I’m learning more about dough.

These tostadas are Italian in flavor – or so they say – and the dough comes pre-made. But I had a fun time trying to figure out how to work with it. It reminded me of late nights with my dad making pizza fritte while my mum was asleep – or at least we thought.

The tostada is half-way between pizza and toast. It’s not gooey and cheesy like pizza, but it’s got a bit more dough and substance than toast.

I liked elements of this dish – and disliked others. But I will definitely be making more dough (they provided the dough this time – I’ll be making it in the future) and definitely trying out more tostadas.

So here it is – in all its rich Italian goodness – Recipe #3: Pizza Dough Tostadas
with Italian Street Corn

Warning: I found this recipe and tried it – and this is my experience. This recipe has been adapted, paraphrased, and annotated by me. All credit goes to the original owner.

Makes: 4 tostadas, which is enough for 4 meals we foundTime: 30 – 40 minutes, depending on how quickly you can roll out doughSurvives: We made it all at once – and ate it all at once – in the future, I’d like to find a way to keep it overnight and make it again.Bang for your Buck: $24 for two servings from Plated.

2 // Get your dough on– Get a large flat surface and flour it liberally.
– Divide your dough into four equal portions.
– Grab 1 portion of dough and place it on the floured surface. Using the palms of your hands (or a rolling pin, if you’re that extra) – stretch and roll the dough into a thin, round, shape. The dough should get pretty thin. // Pizza dough is pretty fun. It constantly bunches back up, so you’ll want to apply constant pressure. I found that – at a certain thickness – I could place the dough stretched over my closed fist and let gravity help me do the work.

3 // Corny? What’s corny? My jokes?Note // these Plated recipes usually have weird ordering of things that I don’t full agree with – so I order them in the way I thought was best. But if you must know, their order was 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6

– Heat a dollop of olive oil[or butter??] in a pan over medium-high heat. When oil is warm and shimmering, add in 2 cups of corn and warm through. // I’m not a huge fan of corn in olive oil. The next time I do this, I’ll buy corn on the cobs and give them a good grilling over the stove and use the grilled corn. I find it just has a beautiful sweet and smoky flavor. I’d probably use 2 or 3 corn cobs.– Once warm, transfer the corn to a mixing boil, add in 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise, 3 tablespoons of grated parmesan, the chopped oregano, 1/5 of the chopped basil, and 1 tablespoons of olive oil.Don’t. Do. This. Don’t ever do this. Don’t add mayonnaise and cheese to corn. Instead, let’s do: 1/3 the chopped oregano, 1/4 the chopped basil, 1 pat of butter, 2 pinches of salt. // When I saw that the recipe called for mayo and corn together, I said “How strange?” I guess I’ll try it. So, confession, I did it. I knew it was weird and I did it anyways. We literally couldn’t eat it. Melted parmesan and mayo? What you get is a weird creamy, salty, hot mess of textures. Corn tastes good. Let the corn taste good.– Set aside and cover with foil to keep it warm.

4 // When the moon hits your eye like a big tostada…

– Heat a dollop of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot and shimmering, reduce the heat to medium. Add in a one of your flattened pieces of dough and fry for 4 – 5 minutes or until the bottom of the dough had browned and become crisp. // You also want to make sure that the middle of the dough is cooked though, so if you find the pizza becoming too brown or even blackening, turn it down little by little.
– When the dough has browned, flip it over. Add some mozzarella cheese to the top of the dough and cook for another 5 minutes. After five minutes, remove from heat and place on a paper towel (to absorb excess oil) and cover with foil to keep warm.– Repeat for all the dough – adding additional dollops of oil as needed.

5 // Prepare the toppings (pineapple optional 😉 )

– While the dough is cooking (or after – depending on how good you are at multitasking), add a dollop of olive oil to a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Once oil is hot and shimmering, add 4 handfuls of baby spinach, the grape tomatoes from before, 2 chopped cloves of garlic (why do they never want to add garlic?), and the remaining basil.– Cook together, stirring slowly yet constantly, until the spinach and shriveled and wilted – about 2 or 3 minutes.– Add in 2 tablespoons of pesto and a sprinkle of salt over the spinach. Stir to incorporate and then remove from heat.

6 // Plate it up

– Place tostada – mozzarella side up – on a plate. Add spinach mix on top of mozzarella. Add a side of corn to it.

Eating Now // Serve immediately. Don’t bother with a knife and fork. Bite right into that beautiful, crispy base. Enjoy immensely.

Eating Later // I’m thinking all you would have to do is not cook the dough. Save the corn and the veggies and then compile the next day after cooking the dough. but I haven’t tried this out yet.

Scorecard // Don’t put mayo in corn.

EASE TO MAKE ★★★☆☆ – There isn’t much technical skill involved – but there is a lot going on at once and a lot that can go wrong. My oil was a little too hot the first time around and I burnt one of the tostadas (I ate that one.) You also have to prep and roll out the dough.

TIME TO MAKE ★★★☆☆ – Not a short time at all – but you are getting quite a fancy meal. But if you had to factor in actually MAKING the pizza dough the timing would be much longer.

LEFTOVER-ABILITY ★★★☆☆ – The veggies and the corn will keep. Prepared dough will not. The raw dough will keep. You’ll just have to make fresh tostadas every night you want to eat it – but it can be done.

TASTINESS ★★★★☆ – Love the tostadas. That hearty, doughy crunch of the tostada. The savory, garlicy goodness of the spinach mix. That… gross… mayo-y corn. Okay. So I’m knocking a point for the corn. But that is easily changeable. Just don’t add the cheese and the mayo (unless you like…. weirdly… sticky… creamy… corn… grossness). Doing this again, could easily bring this up to a higher taste.

REDO-ABILITY ★★★☆☆ – Definitely a possibility. But the hardest part of this in the future will be making the pizza dough. This time around it was provided. But next time…? That’s an extra 2-3 hours onto this recipe.

FINAL JUDGEMENT ★★★☆☆

The recipe overall is pretty good. It’s different than other things we eat. It’s got a great mix of textures, flavors, and ideas and we were happy with it. But there are a few things knocking it down. (1) The corn. Who would ever add mayo to corn? (2) The dough. The dough is both my favorite thing about this recipe and also it’s biggest hangup. It takes some working with. It can easily go wrong. And, in the future, I’ll have to make it. But I see this as a very versatile recipe. Whether you want to put Italian veggies – or maybe some curry of something? – over it! It could really be a neat dish. Overall, this is definitely getting added to my repertoire and – hey – maybe it’ll get me making dough more often!

What do you think? Do you like mine better or theirs?
Do you have a recipe for this that you use all the time?
Let me know! In the Contact Tab!